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I suppose it's fitting that the last purchase of needed supplies I finally made, after glue, sewing thread, beeswax, an awl, clamps, pressing boards, a homemade book press, brushes, a curved sewing needle, a skiving knife, book board, cover leather, book cloth, colour printed signatures, a sharpening stone, headbands, and bookmark ribbon, was end paper.
Trust me it wasn't deliberate for it to come last towards the end of the project. It's just semi-co-incidental, that's all.
End papers are important mostly because they are the key ingredient that attaches the book to its cover. If the cover were to fall off and get lost, how else would you judge the book?
If you have a hard cover book handy (any one will do) open the cover but turn no pages. What you see is the book's end paper. Typically it's quite a bit heavier than the pages of the book, and in the vast majority of bindings, it is content-free. By that I mean there is nothing written on the end paper (if there is something there, it's likely on the back end paper, and courtesy of a librarian). The only aesthetic aspect is usually its colour.
I was planning for something more interesting. The book and the title are printed in red ink, and there is a myriad of red hearts... in the title, and towards the bottom on every love note page. So of course I thought red or white end papers covered in contrasting red or white hearts... that would be nice, no? Ideally in Japanese paper?
Well both my wife and the Japanese took issue with those suggestions. Impossible for me to find genuine Japanese paper featuring hearts (cranes and flowers yes, hearts no), and my darling who is the inspiration for this book (and my life) suggested cream or ivory, not red.
Last Friday we finally paid a visit to the leading arts supply store in Toronto, Above Ground Art Supplies, appropriately located on McCaul Street south of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and in the imposing shadow of OCAD U, Canada's oldest, largest and leading art and design university, located in downtown Toronto since 1876.
I was leaning towards sturdy cream-coloured Canson 100 GSM paper from France, but Susan chose ivory Mingei Chiri Japanese paper instead:
A great choice. Japanese paper is among the very best in the world. Not only is it beautiful in appearance, it is also very robust, because it's made of strong Kozo fibre. That's the good news that makes it well suited to being end paper. The challenge I expected was the translucence of the paper.
I was confident that I could make it work, but I would have to run some tests.
[time passed]
I ran some tests and I feel that these end papers will work. I am hedging against possible failure by lining the cover with the same cream-coloured book cloth I used for the cover art.
The journey continues.
2 comments:
A Feedspot notification popped up in my mailbox, and I came to read about "Time," then discovered the wonderful articles on bookbinding. Books have withstood the test of time and preservation of the past, preserved in library and museum collections, not really subject to search engine whims. As a small press publisher, my own experience began writing one book, designing it, preparing it for mechanized print, then publishing it—the selection of papers and binding; the press; and the smell of fresh ink on crisp sheet-fed papers. One drawer of my flat file is still full of Japanese papers, bought over forty years ago in Los Angeles. Many memories of a press check at Dai Nipon in Tokyo and of walking to the summit of Mt. Fuji, not to mention life on two wheels. As Bob Hope used to say, "Thanks for the memories."
Thank you for dropping by and for the very kind comment. I am very much an amateur. I was introduced to bookbinding in the early 2000’s by an artisanal binder in Montreal originally from Paris who restored medieval books. I still have one more post to do on the very finicky trick of gluing the cover to the end pages.
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